


cosmic desserts

by newsbypostcard



Series: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, M/M, Recovery, talk therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: Steve stands there, looking stupid, hair mussed all to hell and not awake enough to process. “Fondue?”“Don’t ask.”“Okay,” Steve says, and they lean over the counter and eat fondue in silence for an hour.





	cosmic desserts

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [грандиозные десерты](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15401529) by [Christoph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christoph/pseuds/Christoph), [fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018/pseuds/fandom_Starbucks_Roles_TwoSexyMen_2018)



> I think therapy scenes make for good character development and terrible plot, but I wrote this in response to an ask today and it stuck with me all day, so it's become an outtake for the series. This entire fic takes place within the confines of part 5 of this series, [the blackberries in the thickets,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9840632) but it can be read standalone. 
> 
> In that fic, Bucky eventually confesses he's been secretly seeing a therapist, specifically a veteran affairs therapist, for months on Sam's recommendation. This is that therapy. It is not meant to be prescriptive in any way; my experience is limited, I am not a professional, but I had a very good therapist one time. This may be a little too on the nose; subtlety was not my main concern here. It's an outtake! You're welcome to disregard this fic in its entirety. Take it as a character study: Bucky Barnes' insecurities on full display. Love that guy. Thanks for reading.

  


Bucky hates it. He hates it and he has nothing to say, and he’s not about to confess his crimes to a stranger. That’s a violation of your fifth amendment rights. Nobody can make you do that. This is a _trap_ , it feels like a trap, it smells like a trap, people do this _willingly_ and it’s supposed to _help_? 

“We’re here for you, Sergeant Barnes," the therapist says. Her name is Marcella. "Take your time.” 

The first thing Bucky says is, “I'm not a sergeant.” 

“Okay," Marcella says. "James, then?” 

Bucky says, “nope,” with a very high degree of articulation. He's pissed at Sam for giving her his real name. "Just -- Barnes is fine." 

"Sure," she says, without further argument, and Bucky thinks that if he’s fucked up enough that he refuses to be called at least two things that technically apply to him, he probably does have some issues that could stand to be addressed.

“Friends call me Bucky,” he mutters, then adds, “we’re not friends. Barnes is fine.” Then he adds, “actually only – one person calls me Bucky, I don’t even really…” and then he shakes his head and says again, “Barnes is fine.” He’s off to a great start.

“But you like the nickname."

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “It, um… yeah. It’s fine.”

Marcella nods, sets pen to the page. His eyes flit to the notebook on her lap. Bucky wonders if these notes are gonna be uploaded into a database somewhere. “Are those just for you,” Bucky asks, “or…?”

“Pretty much.”

“Pretty much?”

“They stay on paper, they don’t leave this office. Office is kept under lock and key. Security cameras there--" she points -- "and there.”

Bucky’d noticed them when he came in, but it guarantees nothing. “Who do you work for?”

“Veteran’s Affairs.”

“US Department of?”

“Yes.”

“Government’s corrupt.”

“Yes,” she says, smiling.

Bucky doesn’t expect that. He leans back and looks at her.

“Sam Wilson vouched for me,” she reminds him. “You trust him?”

It surprises Bucky to learn that he does. He clenches his jaw and says nothing.

“He’s pretty careful, too,” Marcella says.

Bucky guesses that he is.

She shifts, tucks her legs a little differently. “So I’m getting the impression talking about yourself is kind of a walk before you can crawl situation.” Bucky just looks away, at the bookshelf. “So let’s talk about what we can talk about. Practice externalizing any words at all.”

“Nice day,” Bucky deadpans.

Marcella smiles. “Getting warm.”

“Finally.”

“You like spring?”

He hadn’t expected her to run with it, but at least these are questions he can answer. “Yeah.”

“How about summer?”

“Also good.”

“That’s good. Something to look forward to.”

Simple fucking statements keep taking him by surprise. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the impact of it. It feels intrusive. He starts removing himself from the situation, feels his mind pulling him elsewhere, away.

“Steve hates summer,” Bucky says absently. Thinking about Steve keeps him grounded, but he’s not sure he’d meant to say it aloud.

“Who’s Steve?”

She sounds concerned. Bucky almost laughs. “Roommate,” he says, then shakes his head. “Ah – no. More complicated than that. Old friend, from before the war. Only one who’s still around.”

Marcella nods, makes a note again. “And you live with him?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that going?”

“Um,” Bucky says. Shakes his head. “It’s a lot of things.”

“Not great things.”

“Ah – no. I mean – I dunno. It’s… kinda fucked up. Not his fault. He’s… doing his best.”

“He’s trying to support you.”

Bucky nods. “He’s got his own issues.”

“That bothers you.”

“It fucks up my way of doing things,” he says on an exhale, “but I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing. Just untested. I don’t begrudge him his problems, it’s just… inconvenient. To me.” He shakes his head. “That’s unfair. He’s doing his best.”

“What’s your way of doing things?”

Bucky feels his lips physically tightening. He shakes his head. 

Marcella nods. “So what does Steve do to interfere with that?”

“He wants company,” Bucky says at once. “He wants me around.”

“Is that so bad?”

Bucky thinks about it. Shakes his head. “It’s just… weird.”

“Why is it weird?”

He shakes his head again. He has the feeling he’s gonna do a lot of that.

“Is it strange to you that he likes you?”

Bucky thinks this over a long time. He feels the seconds tick by, individually, his internal clock turning literal.

“It,” he says. “I’m… just constantly convinced he wants the version of me that left for war, and I will never be that. And I can’t explain it to him enough times, because he never believes it. He still wakes up every morning thinking I’m…”

Marcella waits, but the only word Bucky has to say is the one he’s absolutely sure Marcella’s gonna talk him out of believing. The trouble is he doesn’t want that. It does no service to the people he’s killed to reframe what he did to them.

“What do you want him to believe?” Marcella asks.

Bucky thinks it over, but his mind’s a great chasm. He has nothing to say.

“I’ve got this blankness,” he says, and gestures to his head, “when people ask me some things. Like there’s literally nothing there. It’s just empty. I hate it. I don’t understand. I think the enemy did something to me where I don’t remember what I want.”

“You mean with brainwashing.”

Bucky tries to muster enough energy to be annoyed with Sam, but in the end it’s indescribably easier that she already knows without Bucky having to say anything. “They did more than that.”

Marcella nods. Bucky sees in her the slightest hint of hesitation. She is good, but not quite that good -- something in the skin around her eyes puts him at ease. It is fundamentally innocent; the look of someone who wants to help. 

“So the identity issues run deep,” she finally says, shifting her weight again.

Bucky actually _laughs_ – a bit joyless, but also a bit relieved. “You could say that."

“Okay,” she says, and nods like they’re finally getting somewhere.

  


  


  


Bucky does not disclose their sexual relationship, but he has a feeling Marcella knows anyway. He has the feeling Marcella knows a lot of things Bucky isn’t naming aloud.

"It's not like Steve isn't -- helpful," Bucky says. "He is."

Marcella hears the note to it that Bucky can't shake. "But…?"

"He's just _always around_. Feels like he quit his job to be my caretaker, only I don't need it."

"Did he do that, or is that your perception of things?"

"He swears he left his job for other reasons. I just don't buy it."

"Why not?"

"Because he's always around. He's gotta have hobbies other than me, I mean, come on."

"Is he a vet too?"

Bucky hesitates, then nods. "Been out of it longer than I have. Sort of." He cringes. "It's complicated. It's not really his fault, it's just… differences."

"If he got out of the house more, would that help? Or is this a moving-out kind of situation."

"I don't want to move out," Bucky says with sudden alarm.

Marcella smiles, nods. "Okay."

"I _like_ Steve. I'm saying he's helpful. It's good to -- to have someone to… you know, whatever. Eat with, I dunno. Talk to. Not that I'm much of a talker."

"You don't say," she says with a smile.

"Keeps me honest when I got someone else to cook for. He's just -- a pain in my ass."

“So you just want to set some boundaries.” 

Bucky nods emphatically. "Yes," he says firmly. "Yeah, that sounds real fuckin' good, to be honest."

So they figure it out. Bucky encourages Steve to find some new hobbies and, over time, he feels Steve pull back a little -- not much, but enough. He's trying. God help them both, they're both just trying, and Bucky can breathe better. He feels a little less like he's crawling out of his skin. 

He reports this cheerfully to Marcella.

“You look happy,” she remarks.

The smile, if Bucky had one, drops from his face. “Oh.”

“It’s not a bad thing."

“It’s,” Bucky says, but then shakes his head, worries at his lip.

So not all progress comes so easily. Over months Marcella kicks it out of him that part of the reason Bucky doesn’t want Steve around is because Steve makes Bucky happy, if in complicated ways.

"I just don't know why he's hanging around," Bucky says.

"He cares about you."

"I guess."

"Is that not enough?"

"It just doesn't explain it. I care about him plenty, but I'm always thinking about -- you know -- going away, being alone. I just find it hard to grasp that he -- he's just -- believing -- that I'm worth abandonment of whatever the fuck else he could have going on."

"Like what?"

"I dunno!" Bucky says, throwing a hand in the air. "Things! Anything!"

"Do you want him to go?"

"No! All I've wanted was for him to sit the fuck still for five seconds of his life, only now that he's doing it I don't get why. I can't be worth all this. I'm still waiting for the day he wakes up and realizes he's sharing a -- an _apartment_ with a fucking assassin. It's gotta be a matter of time."

"You think he doesn't know?"

"I think he's not thinking," Bucky says.

"Why don't you think you're worth it?"

"Come on, Marcie," Bucky says. "Why the hell does someone like me deserve a damn good thing on this earth?"

Her eyebrows raise pointedly. Bucky rolls his eyes. "Oh, for fuck's--"

“When you were alone,” she asks, “didn’t you tell me you fought for balance? To live a normal life, like someone who cooks and cleans and has to shop?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, “but that’s not–”

“Happiness doesn't fall into the category of normal?"

Bucky feels his gut recoil. “It’s not about happiness,” he says, only maybe it is; he thinks, _I'm talking about whether I'm supposed to be allowed to love,_ and then hates himself for thinking it. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says, and drags a hand over his face. “You sound like Steve. I'm trying to say that we were never supposed to be _happy,_ him and me, and pretending at it is–”

But he stops himself. Marcella just blinks at him. Bucky gives up a little and slumps over, letting his guard down enough just to let himself feel defeated.

“You feel like you and Steve are pretending?” she asks, eventually.

“I don’t feel like it,” he says emptily. “It just is, Marcie. That’s just the fucking way of things.”

“But you both stay,” she says.

“I think about leaving all the time.”

She frowns. “Why?”

This time it’s different from the blankness. This time his mind flits to four different answers over and over, but none of them are right or true. “I’d find an excuse,” he says finally.

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“It’s the truth,” he says. “Because God knows I don’t actually want to leave.”

Marcella nods, expression flooded with awful sympathy. Bucky watches her write for exactly six seconds before he calls the session early and takes a long walk. 

He thinks about what he’s earned. Marcella always points it out when he starts talking about this "cosmic dessert," like there's some plan for him, some being with intentions. He tries to figure out if Steve loving him is something he’s allowed to accept, or whether that's a betrayal of his past, or what, already. Or whether he's just being an idiot who can't accept what's standing in front of him.

In the end he can't shake the feeling like it's more than he's meant to be able to have. He buries his hands in his hair and looks out over some creek, and then he walks to the farmer’s market and picks up some cheese and a fondue pot. 

“I don’t get this bullshit,” he tells Steve firmly when he finally wakes up, “but you’re eating it with me.” He hands him a tiny fork.

Steve stands there, looking stupid, hair mussed all to hell and not awake enough to process. “Fondue?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and they lean over the counter and eat fondue in silence for an hour. Bucky even tolerates Steve smiling warmly at him without remark, and later he lets Steve strip his clothes off real slow, awfully sensuous, and leans into every touch he gives, and nothing bad even happens. Every once in a while, things don’t need to be that complicated.

  


  


  


“I hate talking about this,” Bucky begins.

“Okay,” Marcella says.

“I – Steve.”

“Yes.”

Bucky waits. Marcella waits too.

“I – Steve,” he tries again.

“Hmm,” she says.

“I love him,” he says quickly.

“Yes,” she says, and smiles.

“But he loves me a lot more.”

The smile fades. Not in a bad way. “What makes you say that?”

Times like these Bucky wishes he still chewed tobacco. “He – shows it.”

“Okay.”

“I’m bad at that.”

“Do you think he loves you more just because he shows you in different ways?”

“No, it’s obvious that he loves me more, that’s what I’m saying. I can’t – compete with it.”

“Is it a competition?”

“Yes,” he says ferociously, and she gives him the smile he wants. “No,” he amends, more softly. “But it – impacts the way – we – exist – together.”

“I see.”

“I can’t – compare. I don’t know what word you want me to use.”

“Use whatever word works for you.”

“Thanks, Holly Handler.”

She smiles again. They are getting used to each other. That’s good.

“I want to love him the way he deserves,” Bucky says all at once. 

It’s just for a second, but her eyebrows shoot up. “Okay. What do you feel is deficient?”

He thinks about that. “My feelings."

She looks at him like she’s not sure if he’s kidding. So they’re not quite that used to each other.

“I’m being serious,” he clarifies. “I – like him.”

“That’s more comfortable language to you.”

“It’s inadequate. It doesn’t cover it, but it’s – accessible. Also true.”

“You have trouble expressing yourself.”

“Is that a general observation, or–”

“Clarificatory,” she says, waving a hand. “Pertaining to Steve.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No. I mean – yes. Steve – doesn’t say things as much as he lives them. And I don’t live – my – affection… or whatever… in the same way. But also I don’t say things. I don’t anything. And that’s because I don’t feel compelled to? Because I don’t love him enough.”

“Okay,” she says. He has the impression they’re _getting somewhere_ again. “What does Steve do to show you he cares?”

“He…" He looks at the ceiling. "I hate talking about this.”

“Noted,” she deadpans, miming writing.

Bucky smiles. God, he hates that he doesn’t hate her. “He – touch. And. Things.”

“Right,” she says neutrally. “How’s the sex?”

Bucky physically recoils. “Fucking _really_?”

Marcella seems interested in his response, but she doesn’t say anything. Just waits, like always.

“It’s fine,” he yells at her. “Can we never…?”

“This is a strong reaction. Can I ask–”

“It’s personal!”

“It’s entirely okay if you want to set a boundary here, but we talk about personal things in here all the time.”

Bucky grinds his teeth. “It’s unbelievably personal,” he forces out. He hadn’t known it until he said it.

“Okay,” she says easily. “I won’t ask again.”

But now she’s started something. Bucky runs his fingers through his hair and eventually grips them there as he continues _realizing_ things. “I hate this,” he mutters.

“It’s hard,” she agrees.

Bucky resurfaces, feeling that slump in his shoulders again. “So I guess that’s the thing,” he says. “He gives me something that’s – that matters to me, that… I don’t think I could do with anyone else. Just Steve.”

“Aha,” she says, and takes some notes.

“I didn’t get that I was giving it … more meaning than I realized.”

“So maybe he loves you a certain amount, and you’re reading into it, thinking he must love you more than you love him just because what he offers you means so much to you."

“Maybe,” Bucky says. “I guess I don’t know. But I don’t think I give him anything that means this much to him.”

Marcella smiles at him a little, and Bucky frowns back, swallowing stubbornly against an errant lump in his throat. “Is it possible that you just being around means the same to him as that intimacy in sex means to you?”

Bucky stares a long time. Minutes pass in silence.

“I still don’t know how to show him," he says. "That I care."

“I’m willing to bet that if I brought Steve in here and asked him, he’d say he knows how much he matters to you. It seems like he knows you pretty well. Does it come up? Does he feel insecure in the relationship?”

“No,” Bucky mutters. “But I feel it. I’m selfish.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Steve gave up everything for me and all I do is think about leaving.”

“You still think about that?”

“Constantly,” Bucky says. “I’m not what he thinks I am.”

“Has he said that?”

“ _No_ ,” Bucky says, growing frustrated.

“What does Steve do to make you think he’s wishing you were the person you were before the war?”

“He calls me Bucky!” he shouts back. “I haven’t been Bucky Barnes in so long I can’t even fucking remember what it was like when I was.”

Marcella waits. Bucky sets a fist against his mouth to hide the quiver and waits for his temper to flare down.

“Do you wish he wouldn’t?” Marcella asks.

“No,” Bucky says. “And I don’t get that either.”

“One of the first things you said when you came in here is that your friends call you Bucky,” Marcella says. “Like that’s what you wanted to be called, more than Barnes.”

“I wish I was him. Bucky. But I’m not.”

“Do you? Wish you were that person?”

Suddenly Bucky’s not sure.

“Is it possible you just like that Steve calls you by what he sees when he looks at you?”

“He defends my personhood,” Bucky says, scratching at the corner of his eye. “I’m grateful as hell. I just don’t think I’ve earned it.”

“All that delicious cosmic dessert.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“What if Steve uses that name to let you know that he sees you as you, instead of trying to evoke the person you used to be?”

Bucky thinks about that. “I don’t know how I’d know.”

“What if you asked?”

He finds it in him to look at her then, mockery surely dancing in his eyes. “Let’s not get carried the fuck away, Marcie.”

  


  


  


“Why do you call me Bucky?” Bucky asks, still standing in the door.

Steve looks at him, blinking his astonishment. “It’s… your name?”

“What if I didn’t want to be called Bucky anymore?" he says quickly. "What if I wanted to be called Joe?”

“Okay.” Steve’s still confused as hell, but he doesn’t ask questions. “Whatever you want.”

Bucky stares at him and waits for his heart rate to sort itself out, for his shoulders to fall. Waits for this to settle in him. “I don’t want to be called Joe.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Can I call you Bucky until further notice?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, and then strides over to the sofa and kisses him so filthy stupid that Steve stays confused through the whole subsequent handjob, and Bucky doesn’t even regret being an idiot about this, because somehow in the course of it he got the answer he wants.

  


  


  


“He calls me Bucky because it’s my name,” he reports to Marcella.

Marcella smiles. “I thought he might.”

He collapses into the chair and props his forehead against steepled fingers. “That seems unbearably fucking obvious now and I feel like a jerk-off.”

“Therapy’s like that sometimes,” she says, and turns the page of her notebook.

  


  


  


And so it proceeds: they get through the fact that Bucky likes doing things for Steve, and that Steve probably takes these gestures as a sign that Bucky cares about him, even when it’s necessary life things like “cooking” and “cleaning.” Bucky works on verbalizing his feelings more, though he deeply hates it. He tries to take for what it’s worth that he trusts Steve so implicitly as to be physically vulnerable with him -- that he _wants_ to be vulnerable, that it seems to resolve something in him the more he does it. He tries to accept that he loves Steve the right amount, and that he's allowed to feel it. That he wants to stay, even when he also thinks about going.

“If I don’t want to go,” Bucky yells at Marcella semi-regularly, “why am I always thinking about going?”

They start talking about what he wants, and then they start talking about the future. It’s the very first time Bucky’s thought about it with anything regarding hope or structure since breaking out of his programming. Now that they’ve ascertained he’s still Bucky Barnes in virtue of that being his literal fucking name, the question has become what Bucky Barnes’ future looks like. 

Bucky doesn’t know. “I want to fight my captors,” he says, a bit automatically.

“That’s natural.”

“I want them to burn.”

“That’s natural, too.”

“Excruciatingly.”

“Mmhm.”

“You get this a lot, huh?”

“More than you know,” she says with a slight smile.

She doesn’t tell him he should, though, which Bucky’s surprised to find he’s a bit disappointed about. She’s not a guidance counselor. She's not gonna validate it when he talks about wanting to exact revenge, and he's not stupid enough to state a plan on how he's gonna do it, though he is absolutely going to.

“I feel like I’m 15 trying to choose a fucking job,” he grouses.

“That’s natural,” she says. Bucky rolls his eyes. “This starting-over point is tough for a lot of vets.”

“Is that where I am now?”

“You tell me.”

The territory has become tricky: Bucky knows she knows more about him than he’s said, and he’s definitely admitted to his full name by now. The fact that he’s partners with a guy named Steve doesn’t bode well for his cover, either. But he never says Hydra, and neither does she. She doesn’t even tell him that he’s out of the war, now; she doesn't tell him that he has to re-evaluate his priorities the way he expected her to, as though the battle was over.

“Hey,” Bucky says to Sam on the rare occasion they’re alone. “Does Marcella know I’m _that_ Bucky Barnes?”

“Dunno,” Sam says, a little passive, but then he looks at Bucky direct. “You’re kinda hard to mistake.”

So Bucky operates on the assumption she probably does and errs on the side of caution that she doesn’t. Stays vague. Doesn’t mention Captain America or the Avengers or any of that other shit, but every time he references helping out “friends” with a “project,” she doesn’t seem concerned or confused by his vagaries.

“Dunno if I want to keep doing this kind of thing,” he says. “Dunno if I should.”

“What’s stopping you from doing it?” she asks.

“I don’t fucking want to,” he says, but he means: _I don’t think I’m good enough for it. I don’t think people want me as part of the team_.

“You don’t seem that sure,” she says.

“I dunno,” he says. That’s the answer he always comes back to. He doesn’t know.

“That’s fine,” Marcella says, validating.

It doesn’t feel fine. It’s hard to reconcile his desire to fight Hydra with the fact that he wants to be with Steve. He wants to stay connected to the good side of the movement, even if he does go off on his own on a vengeance mission. But that sounds too simple to his ears. Hydra’s too vast for him to take on alone. He knows Steve would help if he asked, but he doesn’t want to put him at risk. It’ll also take more people than that. He could potentially use the support of more allies, but then he’s back to _I don’t think I’m good enough; I don’t think people want me as part of the team._

So he’s a little stuck. Apart from Natasha, it also seems like he’s the only one who wants to wage this war, and from the way he keeps responding with a breakdown to even minor missions, he’s not ready for the war he wants to wage anyway.

So he doesn’t know. Television and breadsticks. Leaning into what Steve wants to give him. That’s his life right now.

“Is that enough?” he asks, constantly feeling like he's meant to do more.

“It could be,” Marcella says, “if you want it to be.”

“No,” he says flatly. She smiles again.

“Well, then,” she says, and folds her book closed. “The best thing you might be able to do is keep living until you find the path.”

  


  


  


“Barnes,” Sam says slowly, about a week later.

Bucky keeps his back to him, trying to find the fucking milk in his godforsaken fridge. “What?”

“What are you planning for how to get back in the fight?”

Sam thinks he’s good enough to be Captain America. He wants him as part of their hare-brained team. He could fight Hydra, not be alone. Not put Steve at undue risk.

It’s... not the _worst_ idea anyone's ever had.

  


  


  


“You’ve known who I was the whole time,” Bucky asks her. “Haven’t you?”

Marcella sets her mouth, but Bucky takes from it what he should.

“Why did you help me?” he asks. “What made you think I wasn’t gonna kill you the second you pushed?”

“It was clear that you wanted to be here.”

“Bullshit."

She searches him and doesn't say anything, and Bucky intuits from it that Sam told her something. Alright. That’s not bad. “Has he told you what we’ve done?” he asks.

“What have you done?”

It’s a non-answer. Bucky gets that too.

“Me and Steve and Sam,” Bucky starts, but then he raises his chin and pauses. “Me and Steve and Sam.” He says it again, rolls it around in his mouth. “Me and Steve and Sam,” he pushes on, “are gonna share Captain America. Three. As a team.”

Marcella nods, not looking in the least surprised. “How do you feel about that?”

“Afraid,” Bucky says. "But less afraid than I was."

Marcella nods, smiles. Bucky waits a second, lets himself take a breath. “Should I refer Steve to you too so you can counsel all three of us?”

Marcella laughs as though surprised, her grin wide. Bucky smiles, too. “I can do couple’s counselling, but I won’t do both of you separately.”

“Damn,” Bucky says. “Guess you’ll only get two sides of the story.”

“I can’t disclose my clients.”

“Of course."

Marcella sets her book aside. “If you’re uncomfortable continuing,” she says, a little carefully, “I can recommend another colleague–”

Bucky looks up, smile fading. “What? Are you – what is this, a break-up?”

“No,” Marcella says. “You’re welcome to continue working with me if you want. I think we’ve made a lot of progress. But I’ve known Sam for a long time. If his confidence feels like a conflict of interest to you, now that you’re working together officially–”

“No,” Bucky says. “I don’t care what Sam knows. I don’t care what he tells you about me, I don’t care what you know about his state of mind that I don’t. I just want someone who’s not gonna give me shit for being the fucked-up piece of work I am and who’s not gonna break confidence. And I sure as shit don’t want to start over with someone else. That a problem for you?”

“No.”

“Is Captain America twice over too much for you?”

“It wouldn't be if that were true."

“Then I don’t have a problem if you don’t.” He clenches his teeth and swallows hard. “You’re not an asshole, you’re polite enough to laugh at my jokes, and you’re good at your job. I don't – want to learn to trust anyone else.”

Marcella nods, then puts her notebook on her lap again. “I’m sorry if my bringing it up caused you stress. It wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky says thinly. “Hell, it’s probably better that we talked about it.”

“Aha,” she says, smiling. “So you have taken something away from this after all.”

“Yeah. It’s that talking about things still fucking sucks.”

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” she says mildly.

“I blame you personally,” Bucky says. “Now how the fuck am I gonna use the abilities Hydra gave me without getting in my own head about it, can we get to that?”

Marcella nods and smiles, knowing and a little fond. “Ready when you are. What’s your concern?”

  



End file.
